


The Lion and the Storm

by AbbyWell



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Beauty and the Beast AU, F/F, Teenage runaway Beau was unofficially adopted by Veth and Yeza
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26502076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbbyWell/pseuds/AbbyWell
Summary: Beauregard Lionett, slender and quick, sharp as a tack, who doesn’t fit in, who’s too rough around the edges and asks too many questions and loves to read, but would never admit it.Yasha, lost, grieving and angry, who lives in shadows and chains, who’s stuck alone in a crumbling grey castle in the woods where a perpetual storm circles overhead.There's magic at work, and a curse to be lifted, and while Beau has never considered herself to be a hero, giving up the life she's found with the Brenattos to be imprisoned by a monster will be worth it if it keeps them safe.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Fjord & Beauregard Lionett, Fjord/Jester Lavorre, Jester Lavorre & Beauregard Lionett, Veth Brenatto/Yeza Brenatto
Comments: 12
Kudos: 101





	1. Little Town

Beau flicked away the sweat that was threatening to drip into her eyes and curled her hands into fists once more, circling her target. Her feet were swift and sure as she sidestepped her way across the hayloft floor, dodging this way and that, no need to look at where she was moving. Her flow was instinctual.

She lashed out with her right fist and caught the dummy square in its stomach. It wobbled precariously, and when she doubled her efforts with a graceful spin and kick it fell to the floor, kicking up dust and shedding straw that floated in the early sunbeams peeking through the cracks in the roof.

Beau picked it up easily and surveyed the damage. It would do for another few days, but pretty soon she’d have to restuff it. The straw never lasted as long as she wanted it to. She set the dummy upright and patted it where the shoulder would be. “Good job, man. You put up a good fight.”

The dummy, headless and now slightly lopsided, was stoically silent.

Breathing slow, Beau stretched herself into various post-workout contortions before wetting a fresh towel in the water bucket she’d brought up with her and rinsing herself down. She left the towel around her shoulders and carried the bucket carefully down the ladder to the stables below, jumping the last few steps yet landing without spilling a drop. One of the ponies, startled by her sudden appearance, stuck his head over his stall gate and stared at her with round brown eyes.

“Hey, Loo.” Beau held out her free hand and, once Loo was satisfied that she wasn’t a monster, rubbed it gently over his velvety nose. His lips nuzzled her palm, searching for treats. “Later, yeah? Don’t tell Yeza.”

Loo snorted and retreated to the back of his stall, tossing his mane as if he didn’t care about anything, much less about whether she’d brought him any carrot chunks or stolen cubes of sugar. Beau rolled her eyes and headed out into the morning light.

It was early, the air filled with the sounds of the world waking up as she walked up the narrow path to the little house she shared with Veth, Yeza, and their son Luc. And it was a  _ little _ house; they were a halfling family, and Beau as a human had to stoop slightly when she went through the doors, but by this point she’d lived there so long it came to her naturally as breathing.

Sometimes she wondered, with the way her life had turned out, what her younger self would think. She was pretty certain she’d never fantasised about country living - living away from her parents, sure, but didn’t every kid think about that? - and yet here she was in the type of cottage that was in every picture book and fairy tale, all thatched roofs and diamond-patterned windows and roses around the door. Golden yellow roses. Her mother would have called it ‘quaint’.

Beau loved it, and not even because she felt she had to after Veth had been kind enough to invite her to stay three years ago, no questions asked. She loved it because it was so different from the house she’d grown up in. Everything there had been the best it could be, lush furnishings and polished wood panelling, gold-trimmed mirrors and the stained-glass conservatory and too many portraits that looked down their noses at her. It had all been objectively lovely, but might as well have been a museum, for all it looked like anyone ever dared to do anything like  _ live _ there.

She reached the front doorstep of the farmhouse and paused to take off her dusty boots before entering. The door opened straight into the kitchen, the heart of the house, where the kettle was whistling on the stove next to a pan of rapidly blackening bacon. Tensions were high in the Brenatto household this morning. Yeza was looking slightly harassed, his curly brown hair sticking out all over the place as he tried to wrangle his tiny son and make breakfast at the same time. Luc, tucked under his father’s arm, waved at Beau with sticky hands as she came in. “Hi!”

“Morning, boys.” Beau sidled past to rescue kettle and pan, setting them down on a pair of iron trivets in the middle of the huge table. A large portion of the wooden tabletop was covered with smears of butter and jam, echoed on Luc’s hands and face. Beau wiped them up as best she could and reset the places with clean plates before starting to slice bread for more toast.

Yeza had finally managed to get Luc to sit still, and for a brief moment silence reigned. A few seconds later, sounds of hammering and clanking and a shrill voice telling off inanimate objects came through the door at the other end of the room, where the workshop was. Beau smirked.

“You guys all set?” she asked. She fetched a clean pan and set the bread to toast over the stove flames. “Got everything you need?”

“Veth is, uh, doing some finishing touches. She’s been up for hours. I’ve never seen her this  _ intense _ , it’s kind of cool,” Yeza said in that soft way in which he always spoke about his wife. Of the pair of them he was a little milder, a little less impulsive, and he tempered Veth’s wild bouts of enthusiasm and runaway ideas beautifully. Beau didn’t think she’d ever known a couple who were so obviously in love with each other. It bordered on saccharine at times. “No, come here, I’ll do that. You sit.” He nudged her away from the stove.

She could have easily stood her ground against him, but her stomach suddenly growled, making Luc giggle. She sat down and shot him a look across the table, waggling her eyebrows, and he tried to stifle his laughter by stuffing his sticky fingers into his mouth. “Hands, Luc, c’mon. We talked about this.”

There was a loud bang from the workshop and the door opened to reveal a harassed Veth wielding a hammer. “Yeza! I need you, this stupid thing won’t - oh, hi, Beau.” She smiled toothily.

Beau saluted her with a piece of crispy bacon she’d snaffled from the frying pan. “Hey.”

“Mum!” Luc hopped off his chair before anyone could stop him and tottered across the kitchen floor into his mother’s waiting arms. She tucked the hammer into her belt and gathered him up in an all-encompassing hug, kissing the top of his curly head. “Are you done? Is it ready?”

“We’re almost there. Just a few little tiny bits and then we’re gonna blow them away!” Veth tucked her hands under Luc’s arms and spun him through the air to emphasise her point, then nodded towards her husband. “Give me a hand?”

Yeza was already walking toward her, wiping his hands on a tea towel. “Sure. We gonna be on schedule?”

“Fu - heck yeah, we are.” Veth grinned again and deposited her sticky son back on the floor. “Let’s get to it!” 

They wandered into the workshop together, chatting animatedly, and the door slammed shut behind them to leave Luc and Beau alone in the kitchen. They eyed each other solemnly. “Guess it’s just you and me, buddy,” said Beau, getting to her feet again to retrieve the toast Yeza had abandoned on the stove. “You want a sandwich?”

Luc looked troubled, big blue eyes scrunched into a frown, his bottom lip sticking out. “Why can’t I go to the fair?” he asked.

“Your parents said no,” Beau replied, inwardly cringing as she stuffed bacon between two bits of toast. It always felt a little weird to be the voice of authority with Luc, especially as she’d hated listening to any voices of authority when she’d been growing up.

“But why?” Luc insisted.

With a sigh, Beau crouched down so the two of them were almost eye-level. “Because you’re too little,” she explained. She meant it both figuratively and literally - at five years old, Luc was only just about as big as a human toddler - but it still felt like a lame excuse. She tried to force some cheeriness into her voice. “You get to stay with me, though! We can go into town and say hi to everybody, maybe stop at the bakery, and then when your mum and dad get home I bet they’ll have got you something really cool from the fair.”

That got some attention. Luc’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You promise?”

“Promise.” Beau crossed her fingers behind her back and started mentally plotting how to buy Luc something without him noticing, just in case his loving but absent-minded parents forgot.

\---

The sun was high as Beau and Luc made their way down the dusty track towards town after watching a bickering Veth and Yeza drive off towards the woods, where the road delved deep between the trees and soon vanished into shadow, even at this time of day. Loo and John, the chosen ponies for the trip, pulled the cart and its enormously bulky cargo away with their heads held high.

Neither Beau nor Luc had any idea what the machine under the canvas actually was. There hadn’t been time to explain it before they’d had to see Veth and Yeza on their way. Not to be put off, they instead made a game of it as they journeyed into town, Luc riding on Beau’s shoulders with his little feet dangling either side of her head, clad in brown boots that were a miniature replica of his father’s. 

“What about a cookie machine?” he suggested, spreading his hands wide.

Beau glanced up at him with a grin. “You have one of those, it’s called an oven.”

“But what if it made  _ all _ the cookies at the same time and then we wouldn’t have to wait?”

“That would be kinda cool,” Beau conceded. She jiggled her shoulders and Luc’s laughter filled the air as they entered the town square. A family of ducks bobbed and splashed in the nearby fountain, quacking in chorus.

The town was small but always busy, a sort of stop-off for ships and their crew before they headed further up the coast for trade. The air blowing in off the sea that morning was fresh and salty, and mingled deliciously with the scents of the flowershop’s wares and the bakery’s fresh bread, the fishmonger’s latest catch and the sizzling breakfast meats inside the local inn’s kitchen, its windows thrown open to the world.

The two main streets leading in and out of the square were wide and cobbled, one running down to the docks and one going uphill towards the Brenatto house, where it branched off into the familiar dirt track, and beyond into the woods. Most people didn’t go that way much, unless they were travelling further inland and had no other way of reaching their destination. The woods could be treacherous, and though any map would have them marked on its pages, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who really knew what lay in there once you strayed off the path.

There were stories, of course; some of them Beau knew from friends, some were ingrained into the local lifestyle like putting sandbags at your door every day once the winter months rolled in. Ferocious beasts, wild men, spirits of lost travellers...it was all there. Occasionally someone would swear they’d heard howls and screams echoing through the trees, or a strange rumbling growl that sounded like thunder overhead.

Beau didn’t usually go in much for stories, but they were on her mind this morning. She could see the woods from the square, a thick black line of trees like a charcoal smudge overlooking the coastline. She bit her lip, mentally crossing her fingers that Veth and Yeza would make it through okay and return full of their own stories, to either celebrate or commiserate over dinner. This was the first time since before Luc was born, so she’d been told, that they were actually able to make it to the fair with something to show. She really wanted it to go well. They needed a win.

She shook the bad thoughts from her head and weaved her way through the morning market crowd with ease, calling out an occasional greeting, clutching Luc’s ankles as tightly as she could. She’d never forgive herself if anything happened to him while he was in her care.

There was enough for her to worry about here and now, without getting lost in what-ifs and maybes. Determined to make it a good day, she grinned up at Luc’s smiling face.

“Where to first, buddy?”

  
  



	2. Provincial Life

“Fjord! Fjord!”

Luc slipped his hand free of Beau’s and ran for the ramp that led down to the dock, making a beeline for the tall, green-skinned half-orc who was steadily coiling a long, thick rope around his arm. He looked up and grinned, showing the tips of two short tusks that stuck out slightly above his bottom lip.

“Ahoy, there!” Fjord raised his free hand and waved. The motion lifted the bottom of his slightly ragged white shirt to expose the tip of a long scar that Beau knew ran up his abdomen to his collarbone. She’d never asked where it came from, or the one that sliced neatly through his left eye and crisscrossed with another on his forehead.

She returned the gesture as she followed Luc down the ramp. “Hey, man. How’re you doing?”

Fjord shrugged. Around his feet were more tangles of rope, fishing nets, and nearby a few crates and traps that needed organising. “Busy, as usual. Plenty to be getting on with - ‘scuse me, little guy.” He reached down and gently laid the coiled rope by his feet, then picked up another and started over again. Luc was standing as close to him as he could get, watching carefully, even though he would never have been able to even lift the rope without collapsing under its weight. “What about you two? Any plans for the day?”

Leaning against a crate with one knee bent up behind her, Beau surveyed the view of the dockside thoroughfare with a discerning eye, glancing occasionally down to where Luc was now trying to figure out the intricacies of an empty lobster trap. “Veth and Yeza have gone to the fair -”

“Oh, was that today?”

“Yeah, they just set off. We’ve got the run of the place.” She winked at Luc. “Thought we’d do the rounds, maybe get something nice for dinner. And I guess there’s always chores to do.” Now she said it aloud, it sounded like an incredibly bland way to spend the day. Not that that was a bad thing, really - bland was safe. Bland was reliable. Bland was babysitting a boy who was more your little brother than your little brother, buying vegetables and pastries, seeing friends, browsing the bookshop.

And that was okay.

“Beau?” Fjord was looking at her intently. “You with me?

She nodded. “Yeah, just...thinking.”

“Oh?” He stacked another coil of rope on top of the first and cleared his throat. “Say, um, when you say ‘do the rounds’, will you be…”

“Visiting Jester?” Beau interjected with a knowing grin and a single raised eyebrow. “Sure, like we always do. Why?”

Fjord’s cheeks flushed a dark emerald and he looked away for a moment. “No reason. I haven’t seen her much lately, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh.” Beau smirked, but didn’t push or tease. She had known how Fjord felt about Jester before he’d even begun to admit the slightest hint of romantic interest to himself, and she knew better than to press him on it. She didn’t blame him in the least; Jester was one of everyone’s favourite people. She’d had a crush on her as well, once upon a time, when the town and its occupants had all been fresh and new and exciting. A tiefling woman with bright blue skin and a brighter personality had been even more of a novelty. Nowadays she could say she was over it, but her heart might still skip the occasional beat when she caught Jester’s eye and became the recipient of one of her beaming fanged smiles.

“I’ll let her know you said hi,” she said, and bit her lip to keep from laughing when Fjord’s face burned a darker green. “Or you could do it yourself, you know. She’s only over there.” She gestured towards the little white house with a pink front door on the corner of the town square, where Jester lived and worked with her mother, a rambunctious dog named Nugget, and what people often said was a rat but the tiefling insisted was a weasel.

Fjord was spared having to answer by Luc tugging insistently on Beau’s hand - apparently, the charms of lobster traps and coiled ropes had lost their edge. Not for Luc was the fisherman’s life, it would seem. “Come oooon,” he whined. “I want to see Frumpkin.”

“Okay, okay.” Beau leaned over and picked Luc up to deposit him on her shoulders once again. “You got a day off soon?” she asked Fjord. “We should get a drink or something. I miss hanging out with you, man.”

“Should do next week. Come by here tomorrow, I’ll let you know.” He smiled at them both and ruffled Luc’s hair, then lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Keep an eye on her for me. I’m trusting you, Brenatto.”

“Aye, aye!” Luc declared, narrowly avoiding hitting himself in the face as he saluted Fjord. Beau rolled her eyes and carried him away.

The infamous Frumpkin lived in the bookshop, so that was where they went next. Beau would never have admitted to it, but it was one of her very favourite places in the world; quiet and warm, smelling of leather and old paper and wood polish, hard bookshelf edges softened by lamplight and gilded with warm brass railings for the ladders to run along smoothly. There was something about the place that put her mind at ease, even if she usually visited with an excitable five-year-old halfling in tow.

It hadn’t always been that way. When she’d first ventured into the shop around two years before, after psyching herself up for nearly a week, she’d taken an immediate dislike to the sullen-looking human who ran the place. Caleb Widogast was a spindly man, taciturn and morose, who tended to skulk between the shelves watching potential customers like some sort of territorial book-hoarding dragon. Beau had never liked people who skulked.

Nowadays, she also knew that he had a surprisingly wicked sense of humour even if his delivery was completely flat, and he was actually capable of caring about things that lived and breathed - although she suspected that particular emotion began and ended with his cat.

“Morning, Frumpkin.” The bell over the bookshop door rang out cheerily as they entered, and a curious feline face peered over the top of the nearest bookshelf. Frumpkin’s whiskers twitched, and he stood up for a good stretch before sticking his head out and deigning to let Luc scratch behind his ears. A loud purr began to fill the otherwise silent space. For a split second, Frumpkin’s eyes flashed bright blue, then soft footsteps approached and Caleb appeared by the counter.

“Ah. Hallo, Beauregard. Luc, you are getting big.” He smiled at them both. Caleb’s smiles were strange; they were genuine, but they only seemed to affect the lower half of his face, while his eyebrows remained stuck in a frown or drawn up in the middle like he was worried about something. “We have some new children’s books in. Would you like to see?”

Beau set Luc down on the floor and watched him scamper over to one of the lower shelves, where several large books bound in bright colours waited enticingly. Then she turned her attention to Caleb. He looked tired - he always looked tired - and even paler than usual, the shadows under his eyes making them look almost bruised. His too-long auburn hair was pulled into a low ponytail that he’d been braiding absently while he worked, if the tangles hanging down over his left shoulder were anything to go by. He always had to be doing something with his hands.

“Did you sleep last night?” Beau asked, cutting to the chase. Caleb shook his head resignedly.

“Sleep? What is this strange word?” he asked, but a quirk of Beau’s eyebrow made the attempted joke die on his lips. “Nein. I did not.”

Beau frowned and crossed her arms. “What about that tonic Jester gave you? Isn’t that helping?”

Caleb shook his head. “I do not like it. It makes my head all foggy, I do not...I don’t…” He paused, trying to find the right words in a language that wasn’t his first. “I like to keep my head clear.”

“Oh.” A flash of understanding passed through Beau’s mind. “Memories?”

“Du hast den Nagel auf den Kopf getroffen,” Caleb said, deadpan. He reached up to take Frumpkin off the bookshelf and cradled the cat in his arms, kneading his fur with one hand as he walked back towards the desk. “I will be fine.”

“I thought the whole point of that stuff was to help you get some rest?” Beau followed him across the floor, keeping her voice low so Luc didn’t catch the question. “I get wanting to keep your head straight, that’s cool, but why would you even want to remember it all when you could forget it for a few hours and stop feeling terrible? You look like hell, and Jester made you that stuff especially. You wanna waste all her hard work?”

That was a low blow, and Beau knew it - but then, she was very good at delivering blows.

It was a long-standing argument between them, made longer by the fact that they were as stubborn as each other, just in different ways. Beau was pretty sure she was the only person in town who knew who Caleb had been before he’d come to live there, and that she didn’t know the whole story. But it was enough. If she had been in his position, she would have jumped at the chance to catch a few hours of dreamless sleep without being haunted by past mistakes and horrors. Caleb practically insisted on wallowing in it.

He wasn’t saying anything. His piercing blue eyes flicked over her face, and he opened his mouth a couple of times before closing it again, filtering his thoughts and deciding they weren’t worth saying before they made it past his lips. That, or he had made the unilateral choice that she wouldn’t want to hear anything he had to say.

Beau’s feature softened a little, and she reached out to carefully place a hand on Caleb’s arm. “Try it,” she said firmly. “Just try it. If it doesn’t work, I’ll never bring it up again, but at some point you need to sleep.” She turned from him and approached Luc instead, crouching down to where he was deliberating between two books on the floor in front of him. One had a picture of a bear in a suit of armour, the other a small bird-person in a green cloak. “Hey, buddy. Pick what you want?”

“I can’t choose!” Luc looked stricken. Beau quickly checked her coin purse and smiled.

“Get both,” she said decisively. “We can read them later while we wait for your mum and dad to get home.”

She paid for the books, and Caleb wrapped them up in brown paper and string, then stamped the package with ‘ _ Widogast’s _ ’ in red ink. “Enjoy,” he said to Luc solemnly, handing him the books like they were treasured historical relics. Luc hugged them tight against his body with equal reverence.

On the threshold of the shop, Beau paused, sensing Caleb was going to speak. He cleared his throat. “If you, ah, you are going to see Jester, tell her I will try it tonight.”

“Good.” Beau flashed him a brief smile over her shoulder. “And eat something too, yeah? Or when Veth gets home tonight I’ll tell her how skinny you’re looking.”

It shouldn’t have been possible for Caleb to get any paler, yet he blanched at the implication in Beau’s words. Veth was a good friend of his, too, visiting the shop regularly to peruse the shelves much as her son had just been doing - though her interests leaned more towards engineering, alchemy, and the occasional smutty novel that she would leave within too-easy reach of said son while her mind was on other things. Every time she visited, she would return home with her arms full of books and her mouth ranting good-naturedly about how Caleb was too thin and they should invite him round for dinner sometime.

A perfectly reasonable and friendly idea, but the mere suggestion of leaving his shop was enough to send Caleb scurrying to safety behind the counter.

“Do not say a word,” he murmured, almost too quietly for Beau to hear him from the doorway. “I will eat.”

“Cool.” Beau gave him a final searching look, her blue eyes just as shrewd and piercing as his own, then left him behind with a lazy salute. She watched Luc totter in front of her across the square, books tucked close to his chest, making a beeline for the bakery. “I guess that’s where we’re going next,” she muttered to herself, then raised her voice as Luc began to pick up speed, wobbling down the slight incline towards the bakery window. “Hey, Luc, slow down a little. You’re -”

She was almost quick enough to stop him - almost. There was a loud popping sound, like a cork being pulled from a bottle, and Luc was suddenly bowled over onto his back and into a puddle by a yapping, slobbering ball of dog that immediately started licking the splashes of muddy water off his face.

“Nugget! Bad boy!” Jester came running up the road, her blue cheeks turned purple with exertion and her skirt covered in mucky paw prints. “Bad, bad puppy! No poofing onto people! No! Oh, hey, Beau!” She flashed a wide smile in an attempt to seem casual while wrangling a rambunctious teleporting dog. “I’m  _ so _ sorry, he got away from me again!”

“It’s okay, Jes.” Beau easily pulled Luc back onto his feet and tried to brush him clean with her palms. Physically he was fine, laughing even, but he’d definitely be needing another bath. “Not doing so well on the training front, huh?”

“He’s so  _ naughty _ ,” Jester complained once she’d gotten her breath back. Nugget didn’t look apologetic in the least, all too-long puppy legs and big pointy ears and lolling tongue, hanging happily in Jester’s arms. “Mama says I have to keep trying, though, he’s eating us out of house and home and I promised -”

There was another pop, and Nugget vanished. Jester looked crestfallen. 

“I said the ‘h’ word,” she moaned, then let out a snarl of frustration. “This is the  _ worst _ morning. All I wanted was to get some cupcakes. Cupcakes, Beau! That’s all!”

Beau chuckled. “Maybe he’ll listen to you if you give him some? I know this one does.” She nodded towards Luc, then turned back to Jester with a glint in her eye. “It’s not all bad. Fjord says hi, by the way.”

The purple flush in Jester’s cheeks returned in full force before she managed to school her expression into no more than casual interest. “Oh? Really? That’s...nice.”

“Uh-huh.” Sometimes, amusing as it was to bear witness to the endless back-and-forth of their affections, she wanted to clonk their heads together. They clearly had feelings for each other that were at least worth exploring, so what was holding them back? Maybe it was an outside observer thing, she pondered, in that what seemed so obvious to her wasn’t visible for the hapless pair caught in the midst of it.

“Did he say...anything else?” Jester was asking, twiddling the edge of her skirt between her fingers. Beau rolled her eyes, though not maliciously.

“You wanna talk to him, go see him yourself. He’s knee-deep in rope piles and lobster traps down on the dock. Give him a cupcake, I’m sure he’d appreciate it.” She took hold of Luc and hefted him onto her hip, tucking him against her with his new books - thankfully saved from the puddle by Caleb’s wrapping skills - sandwiched between them. “We have to go.  _ Someone  _ needs another wash - can’t have me being left in charge and him looking like a filthy little goblin.”

Luc giggled. “It’s me,” he said in an exaggerated whisper, his grinning face streaked with dirt.

Beau shook her head, sharing a smile with Jester over the top of Luc’s matted curls. If this was the most exciting thing to happen today, that would actually be a relief - there was a lot to do before Veth and Yeza came home.


	3. Alone

Another shred of carrot peel fell to the kitchen floor. Not for the first time, Beau wondered about letting some of the chickens into the house to eat up the scraps while she worked. It was probably too late by now; she’d already peeled and chopped most of the vegetables and piled the remains up for composting.

She deftly sliced the final carrot into four chunks and dropped it into the large pot on the stove, where some garlic, chopped onions, and more carrots were already sizzling. It was starting to smell delicious already.

Beau actually enjoyed cooking; she simply didn’t cook their meals much because Yeza enjoyed it more. He said he found it soothing. Beau was inclined to agree, though she’d initially started learning how to cook for herself as an act of rebellion against her parents, who felt such things were beneath them.

If there was one way to get her to learn something, it was to tell her she couldn’t, or shouldn’t.

It had been basic things at first. Cutting out biscuit shapes, kneading bread dough - another excellent way to relieve stress - in the kitchens of her old home under the watchful eye of the chef, and pretty soon she’d moved on to basic stews and casseroles and puddings. Now, when given the opportunity, she could fillet a fish or trim a steak and cook either to perfection every time.

It helped her focus, too. Sometimes she’d be kept awake at night by too many thoughts fighting for space in her head. Taking the time to carefully measure and mix ingredients, shape dough or pour batter, and count the minutes on the kitchen clock always made an excellent distraction. Inevitably, she would emerge on the other side of another midnight baking frenzy with a clearer head and arguably too many cookies.

Not that Veth, Yeza, or Luc ever seemed to mind.

She moved to the stove, where some sausages from the local butcher were popping and hissing in the frying pan. When they were cooked through, she’d cool them off and slice them up to add to the stewpot, then get to work on the potatoes. Maybe roasted ones tonight.

The clock chimed five times, a cheery sound in the otherwise quiet kitchen space, and Beau lowered the flames under the stewpot. It could look after itself for a few minutes while she woke Luc from his nap. It was starting to get dark outside, his parents would be home in an hour or so, and if he continued to sleep through he’d wake up starving and grumpy in the middle of the night.

At the bottom of the staircase she paused, then on a whim, she hopped onto the bannister so she could run up the narrow rail to the upstairs landing. It felt a teeny bit rebellious, though she knew neither Veth nor Yeza would ever try and put themselves in a position of authority over her, given how close they were in age. At most, there’d be some gentle admonishment for doing such things around Luc, but this was a rare moment of alone-time when she could practise skills she felt she might be losing a little. There’d been plenty of places and reasons to climb things in her old home, to get away - not so much here.

She balanced on tiptoe at the top of the bannister, trying to keep as still as possible, then landed on the dark polished wood of the upper floor without a sound. She allowed herself a small triumphant fist-pump before getting up and walking quietly to Luc’s bedroom door. If she pressed her ear against the blue-painted wood, she could just about hear his little snuffly snores on the other side. It tugged at something in her heart that she tried not to think about too much.

The room was lit only by a bedside lamp that cast shifting star patterns on the walls, and she had to carefully navigate the mess of Luc’s bedroom floor to reach his side. Strewn everywhere were pages and pages of drawings that were somewhat reminiscent of the plans she’d sometimes seen in the workshop, or when Veth spread them out on the kitchen table to discuss mechanics over breakfast. Multi-coloured building blocks that may have once been a tower sat in a heap near the wardrobe, and under the windowsill two stuffed toys, a dog and an owl, appeared to be in the midst of an epic battle. Resting on a high shelf, where he could only get it if he asked nicely, was Luc’s pride and joy - a toy crossbow his mother had bought him on her last trip out of town for parts.

“Beau?” Luc stirred, rolling over and rubbing his eyes with one tiny clenched fist. His curls were sticking up in all directions. “Are Mum and Dad back?”

“Not yet, buddy.” Beau leaned down and tucked Luc’s hair away from his face, and he rubbed his cheek against her hand like a sleepy kitten. “But I’ve started on dinner, so I came to get you up. You want a drink?”

“Uh-huh.” Luc pushed the bedcovers away and stood up on shaky little legs, holding out his hands to Beau. He was always extra clingy when he’d just woken up. She lifted him easily and tucked him against her hip in a motion that these days felt as natural as breathing, carried him downstairs and deposited him on his usual chair at the kitchen table. Still drowsy, he sat still while she fetched him water and sipped it quietly as he watched her dart around the kitchen working on dinner, chopping the sausages, fetching dried herbs from the bunches hanging on the wall, muttering to herself as she glided around the table with easy grace. She was quick and dexterous, like a cat, and her ponytail whipped behind her head like a willow branch in the wind when she turned around.

And then another hour had passed, and another, it was dark, and the stew had been ready for ages but Beau hadn’t even started on the potatoes because there was absolutely no sign of Veth and Yeza.

She scooped some stew into two bowls for her and Luc and they ate in silence. It was all she could do to keep a happy face on, when they both kept glancing nervously out of the kitchen window as if the pitch-black night might suddenly vomit up two halflings from the shadows and all would be well. She fidgeted in her seat, keeping her hands in her lap so Luc couldn’t see her picking at the skin around her thumbnails. 

Luc stopped shifting the food around in his bowl and dropped his spoon with a clatter. When he looked up, his eyes were huge and worried, and Beau’s heart thudded painfully in her chest. “Where are they?” he asked plaintively. “Why aren’t they back yet? Are they okay?”

“I…” Beau paused, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. She didn’t want to lie to him, but she didn’t want to scare him either. In the end, she got up and came around the table to pull him into a hug. “I don’t know, bud. Maybe they just...took a wrong turn?”

An image, unbidden and unwelcome, flashed through her head; her and Luc, alone, adjusting to life without the steadying presence of Yeza or Veth’s comforting chaos. She didn’t know if she could handle that.

And then something else reached her ears, and her head snapped up.

_ Hooves _ .

“Stay here!” she barked suddenly to Luc, darting to the front door. She threw it open much harder than was necessary and grabbed the first pair of shoes she knew would fit her, shoving them onto her feet and peering out into the night for a sign, any sign...

Just passing the threshold of the woods, John the pony was galloping towards the house at breakneck speed, with Loo following close behind. Slumped across John’s back, clinging on for dear life, was Yeza.

Beau broke into a run, her feet barely touching the ground as she raced towards them. She managed to avoid being trampled under John’s hooves and made a grab for Loo’s reins but they slipped through her fingers. Fortunately, well-trained pony that he was, Loo skidded to a halt a few yards further on and trotted back to nuzzle Beau’s neck moments later, huffing gently down the collar of her shirt. She reached up absently to pet him as she watched Yeza tumble down from John’s back and land unsteadily on the ground.

“Yeza? What the fuck? Where’s the cart, where’s - oh shit!” Beau leapt forward to catch him as his knees gave way and scooped him up as if he weighed nothing. He trembled in her arms. “Yeza?”

“Veth…” he moaned, tears running down his cheeks. His skin, exposed by his torn shirt and waistcoat, was freezing cold to the touch. A hairline crack spanned the left lens of his glasses. “Veth…”

Beau carried him into the warmth of the cottage without a second thought and set him down on a chair in the kitchen, scooting it closer to the oven, which they kept smoldering at all times because it took too long to heat up in the mornings otherwise.

Luc’s face lit up and he scrambled out of his seat to run towards them. “Dad!” He paused, and the smile slid into a worried frown. "Dad..?"

"Hey." Beau spotted the oncoming tears and crouched down to his level to take him by the shoulders. "Your dad isn't feeling good. Can you get the blanket from the couch? And a cardigan? Anything to get him warm." She tightened her grip slightly as his bottom lip began to wobble. “Come on, be a big boy for me, yeah? You can do it.”

Luc’s expression turned very serious and he took a deep, determined breath, which any other time would have made Beau laugh. He nodded firmly and ran out of the room, his tiny hurried footsteps echoing through the house.

Beau returned to Yeza, bringing him tea, looking over his wounds, checking he was still awake. She didn’t know if it was bad for him to fall asleep; she didn’t know how hurt he was. All of her extremely limited medical knowledge came from Jester. Fortunately he seemed to have only sustained a few cuts and bruises, though there was a particularly nasty one tearing a path through his right shoulder. She set about cleaning it as best she could in silence, not trusting herself to speak even to cover the sound of Yeza’s crying.

When Luc returned, wobbling, his face obscured by a bundle of blankets from the couch and his own bed, three jumpers of varying sizes, and his favourite dog and owl toys, she was about to scream from not knowing what had happened. Her mind raced with questions that Yeza was still clearly in no position to answer, even as she wrapped him up warm and poured out what felt like endless cups of tea that none of them were drinking, and rushed outside to check that the ponies hadn’t run off again but were safely back in the barn, and noted dimly that she was tracking mud into the house and she’d have to clean it up in the morning.

It felt too normal - no, normal wasn’t the right word, but how could she be doing these things when Veth was missing and Yeza had been injured and none of this made any fucking sense when all the evening was meant to be was dinner and talk of the fair, maybe a glass of wine by the fire once Luc had gone to bed?

Alone for the moment on the threshold of the kitchen, she noticed that her hands were shaking and curled them into defiant fists. Her eyes felt heavy and her throat thick, but she didn’t cry.

She could not fall apart right now.

“I’m going to get Jester,” she announced as she entered the room once more, quietly pleased to see that Luc was now sitting on his father’s lap and cuddling him as close as he could. “Luc, buddy, can you look after your dad while I’m gone? I’ll run as fast as I can, I promise.” There wasn’t time to hitch up one of the ponies again, and they deserved a rest anyway.

Yeza raised his head and looked like he was about to say something against it, but the hard glint in Beau’s eyes must have put him off. “Be careful,” he whispered, his voice sounding far too small and filled with pain.

Beau tried very hard not to think about what that could mean. She planted a quick kiss on both their foreheads - which wasn’t something she did normally but with everything so up in the air it felt right, somehow - and grabbed her long blue coat from its hook. “I’ll lock the door behind me, shall I?”

She didn’t wait for an answer before running out into the night.


End file.
